Barbie, Mattel and Greta Gerwig’s multi-million-dollar confection of nostalgia and hot pink, is a blockbuster hit and a bona fide cultural phenomenon. The film has taken in more than a billion dollars at the box office and inspired scores of breathless articles, everywhere from the mainstream press to the far left, extolling it as an artistic and political masterpiece.
Eviction was a constant threat for working-class people during the Great Depression. As early as 1929, the unemployment rate had jumped to 11 percent; by 1932 it had reached 29 percent, with no sign of economic recovery on the horizon. Abandoned by the system, masses of unemployed workers were left to figure out how to make ends meet.
In May 1968, over the course of not much more than a month, student protests against police repression in Paris sparked off a general strike of millions of workers, consuming French society for weeks and shattering the notion that capitalism could not be challenged in advanced industrial economies.